Mind & Brain Scienes forum open; Logic forum merger

A new forum called https://www.physicsforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=149 [Broken] has been opened in the Other Sciences category. Here we can discuss various topics and disciplines in mind and brain studies, including (cognitive) psychology, (cognitive) neuroscience, consciousness studies, A.I. and other relevant computer sciences, and linguistics. We want the forum to be primarily scientifically oriented, but some related disciplines like phenomenology, meditation, and philosophy of mind can also be discussed here. (I will be writing a new thread soon discussing what kinds of philosophy will be appropriate for Mind & Brain Sciences.) Some threads from other forums have been moved into this new forum to give it a bit of a head start.

In other news, since the Logic forum in Philosophy has been seeing little traffic of late, it has been merged together with Philosophy of Science & Mathematics forum. The new forum, appropriately enough, is called Philosophy of Science, Mathematics, and Logic.

Also note some subtitle changes for the Social Sciences forum. Psychology is no longer listed under Social Sciences, but rather under Mind & Brain Sciences (although depending on the subject, some psychology topics can still be discussed in Social Sciences). Two new entries have been added to the Social Sciences subtitle, Linguistics and Archaeology.

Unless the given topic in artificial life pertains to the brain or cognition, it probably isn't appropriate for Mind & Brain Sciences. Insofar as a-life is about modeling life, I suppose the best fit at PF would be the Biology forum.

well alife has many forms most dealing with the programming of populations rather than the mechanical processese within an individual. That is to say alife studies the interactions amongst a individual and its society(ie selforganizaion in society)...which is a part of cognition i guess.

well alife has many forms most dealing with the programming of populations rather than the mechanical processese within an individual. That is to say alife studies the interactions amongst a individual and its society(ie selforganizaion in society)...which is a part of cognition i guess.

Sounds like Social Sciences to me. There might be some alife topics appropriate for the new forum-- I'm not particularly familiar with the whole range of what is studied in alife so I can't rule everything out-- just use good judgment in choosing where to post what.

Cool! I'll have to start paying more attention around here before I get lost in the halls with all the rearranging going on! Does this mean topics in social sciences and biology that deal with neurosciences and psychology will get moved to the new forum? I guess I better just go looking around and see what other remodeling has been going around while I've been kept away by dial-up at a snail's crawl.

Edit: Woo hoo! I just took a look over there, and after a few moments of thinking, "That's all you moved here?" I then realized that I had my settings showing only a month's worth of threads, so once I reset that, I saw all the hard work hypnagogue has done moving SO MANY threads over there! All my favorites in one place now. This should save a lot of trouble shuffling topics around since those were always the troublesome ones of choosing a category for something that started out as cognitive psychology and turned into a neuroscience discussion and then belonged in some limbo between social sciences and biology. Now they all have a home.

Does this mean topics in social sciences and biology that deal with neurosciences and psychology will get moved to the new forum?

I've actually been pretty conservative with what I've moved into the forum thus far. For instance, I left a couple of recent threads about neurotransmitters and the evolution of the brain in the Biology forum since these threads seem to be as good of a fit in Bio as they would be in M&B. For consistency's sake, though, it might be a good idea to move all brain related bio stuff into M&B. What do you think?

As far as psychology goes, I think there are some psych topics that are a more natural fit in Social Sciences, such as social psychology. I'm also more inclined to leave psych threads in SS if they are intimately bound up with wider social issues or controversies, for instance the issue of what psychological impact video games have upon people.

That's kind of just the way I've felt it out so far, but of course other mentors and memebrs might have some different viewpoints, and input on stuff like this is always good if you (or anyone else out there reading!) have any suggestions.

Moonbear said:

Edit: Woo hoo! I just took a look over there, and after a few moments of thinking, "That's all you moved here?" I then realized that I had my settings showing only a month's worth of threads, so once I reset that, I saw all the hard work hypnagogue has done moving SO MANY threads over there! All my favorites in one place now. This should save a lot of trouble shuffling topics around since those were always the troublesome ones of choosing a category for something that started out as cognitive psychology and turned into a neuroscience discussion and then belonged in some limbo between social sciences and biology. Now they all have a home.

Yeah, there are a bunch of old ones in there, but as I mentioned before I was fairly conservative in what I moved, and also I only went back a few months in most cases. If anyone has suggestions for current threads I missed or goodies but very oldies that would be a good fit in M&B, drop me a PM or email, or respond in this thread.

I've actually been pretty conservative with what I've moved into the forum thus far. For instance, I left a couple of recent threads about neurotransmitters and the evolution of the brain in the Biology forum since these threads seem to be as good of a fit in Bio as they would be in M&B. For consistency's sake, though, it might be a good idea to move all brain related bio stuff into M&B. What do you think?

Since we've gone all out and created a special forum for those topics, I think it would be best to move them over from biology. I didn't look if anyone thought to do it already, but a sticky in the biology forum announcing the mind-brain forum and instructing people asking about those topics to go there would 1) help advertise the new forum, and 2) clarify why topics are suddenly being moved (and maybe help direct people to post in the new forum to ease up the burden on the mentors to have to keep moving those discussions over). A similar sticky in Social Sciences should also be put up for the same reason. I don't think the people over there always get way back here to see what's going on in feedback, so stickies in the affected forums will help with that.